Council Members Challenged To Be Fair

I have livedin the Rim area for3 years and I have seen a lot of changes.

This talk about how we need to create low-cost housing is disconcerting to me. When I grew up, learned that you work hard and live within your means, and now that just doesn't seem to apply anymore.

My first house was a little, inexpensive house and I worked my way up to better and better over the last 30 years and I am proud of that.

One of the things that bothers me are the figures everyone seems to be quoting about income and cost of housing. First you use figures on income from Gila County, then you use home price figures from Payson -- let's compare apples to apples.

I know there are plenty ofnexpensive houses in Payson and I also know that there are some very expensive houses here as well, this is what is taking the average home price so high when you have so many $1 million homes in Chaparral Pines, The Rim, etc. Herein lies some of the problems.

So first I would like to see real figures, then maybe we can accurately discuss what this town needs in the way of low-cost housing.

In Telluride, Colo. they have low-income apartments for the people that work there and barely make minimum wage. This plan may work for them and it may work for us, but to subsidize the buying of homes is just plain wrong.his becomes all about entitlements and frankly I have seen enough of this in our country.

There must be a way for the low income worker to survive here.

Maybe if there were fewer people willing to work for such low wages, the employers would have to pay higher wages and the problem would fix itself.

I have a business in Payson and it takes highly skilled workers making better than average wage, and that's what Payson really needs is better-paying jobs, not subsidized housing.

So I challenge all the council members to remember that no one gave them their homes and that's the only thing that's fair. Because after all, what will separate one family from qualifying and the next from not -- $500 dollars a year income. How fair can that be?